Luke  TREADWELL


Craftsmen and coins: signed dies in the Iranian world (third to the fifth centuries AH)





ISBN 978-3-7001-6959-8
Print Edition
ISBN 978-3-7001-7162-1
Online Edition
doi:10.1553/0x0028e89c
Denkschriften der phil.-hist. Klasse 423 
Veröffentlichungen zur Iranistik  67 
Veröffentlichungen der Numismatischen Kommission  54 
2011  124 Seiten mit zahlr. Abb. 29,7x21 cm, broschiert
€  31,32   
     

Luke TREADWELL
is University lecturer in Islamic Numismatics at Oxford University and curator of Islamic coins in the Ashmolean Museum


The engravers' signatures discussed in this book were inscribed over a thousand years ago on the metal surfaces of coin dies which measured no more than three and half centimetres in diameter. Although not a single signed die has survived to the present day, a small number of the many thousands of coins made from them remain in coin collections all over the world. What do these tiny marks have to tell us about the early medieval Islamic world?
In fact they tell us a great deal about the working lives of two metalworking craftsmen, Mujib and ?asan, who made dies for mints in Afghanistan and Iran (293/905 to the 360s/970s). The signatures allow us to identify a number of dirham dies that can be attributed to each engraver. By comparing the style of these signed dies with unsigned dies of the same period we can build up a corpus of objects that can be attributed to each craftsman. The die corpus provides a pool of evidence upon which to base a detailed study of the engraver's working practices. It allows us to see how he manufactured these objects, what kind of tools he used, the styles of script he chose and even the mistakes he occasionally made.
Our engravers' working environment was very different to that of the caliphal period which preceded it. When the unitary caliphal state fragmented into numerous successor state polities, the highly regulated centralised caliphal die workshop disappeared. Since there were no trained dirham die engravers in the successor states, the new rulers were forced to employ craftsmen who had learned their profession as metalworkers or gemcutters in the bazaar, whence they brought their signing practice into the mint. The signing phenomenon, though short-lived, illustrates the momentous changes caused by the collapse of the caliphal monetary system.

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Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
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Craftsmen and coins: signed dies in the Iranian world (third to the fifth centuries AH)


ISBN 978-3-7001-6959-8
Print Edition
ISBN 978-3-7001-7162-1
Online Edition



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Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
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Thema: numismatics
Luke  TREADWELL


Craftsmen and coins: signed dies in the Iranian world (third to the fifth centuries AH)





ISBN 978-3-7001-6959-8
Print Edition
ISBN 978-3-7001-7162-1
Online Edition
doi:10.1553/0x0028e89c
Denkschriften der phil.-hist. Klasse 423 
Veröffentlichungen zur Iranistik  67 
Veröffentlichungen der Numismatischen Kommission  54 
2011  124 Seiten mit zahlr. Abb. 29,7x21 cm, broschiert
€  31,32   
     


Luke TREADWELL
is University lecturer in Islamic Numismatics at Oxford University and curator of Islamic coins in the Ashmolean Museum

Luke Treadwell
PDF Icon  Umayyad dirhams (plates 1–2); ʿabbasid dirhams (plate 3) ()
S.  121 - 124

Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften


  2011/07/19 09:20:23
Object Identifier:  0xc1aa5572 0x0028fbfe
.

The engravers' signatures discussed in this book were inscribed over a thousand years ago on the metal surfaces of coin dies which measured no more than three and half centimetres in diameter. Although not a single signed die has survived to the present day, a small number of the many thousands of coins made from them remain in coin collections all over the world. What do these tiny marks have to tell us about the early medieval Islamic world?
In fact they tell us a great deal about the working lives of two metalworking craftsmen, Mujib and ?asan, who made dies for mints in Afghanistan and Iran (293/905 to the 360s/970s). The signatures allow us to identify a number of dirham dies that can be attributed to each engraver. By comparing the style of these signed dies with unsigned dies of the same period we can build up a corpus of objects that can be attributed to each craftsman. The die corpus provides a pool of evidence upon which to base a detailed study of the engraver's working practices. It allows us to see how he manufactured these objects, what kind of tools he used, the styles of script he chose and even the mistakes he occasionally made.
Our engravers' working environment was very different to that of the caliphal period which preceded it. When the unitary caliphal state fragmented into numerous successor state polities, the highly regulated centralised caliphal die workshop disappeared. Since there were no trained dirham die engravers in the successor states, the new rulers were forced to employ craftsmen who had learned their profession as metalworkers or gemcutters in the bazaar, whence they brought their signing practice into the mint. The signing phenomenon, though short-lived, illustrates the momentous changes caused by the collapse of the caliphal monetary system.



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Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
A-1011 Wien, Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2
Tel. +43-1-515 81/DW 3420, Fax +43-1-515 81/DW 3400
https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at, e-mail: verlag@oeaw.ac.at